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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"If you don't starve the system, you won't make it change."

Yup. That's what some guy in York, PA is saying. Sounds just like the guys here wrecking our library, our city and our whole community.If they don't wreck it they can't fix it. (interpret that to mean--if they don't wreck it, they can't get "elected" to fix it--of course then they'll just wreck it more.)...But I don't want my town wrecked, TCU. Can't you go F%%% up some other town and leave Troy alone?Here's the article from the Wall Street Journal. It just shows how these "grass roots" organizations, like TCU are nothing of the sort. They get their marching orders from high above. And they are all doing the same thing in unlucky communities ALL OVER AMERICA. First they do anything to defeat millage increases needed by cities left starving by the real estate crash.Then they go to starve the schools. Faced with this attack on her community a mom in York says, "Starving education is the last thing that makes long-term economic sense." Stupid, stupid, stupid people listening to TCU. They are destroying us only because they think a few pennies in their little Dickensian Scroogey pockets are more important than children, libraries, communities, their friends and neighbors and families and Troy. Greedy jerks.

Tea Party Heads to School

YORK, Pa.—Trying to plug a $3.8 million budget gap, the York Suburban School District, in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania, is seeking to raise property taxes by 1.4%.

No way, says Nick Pandelidis, founder of the York Suburban Citizens for Responsible Government, a tea-party offshoot, of the plan that would boost the tax on a median-priced home of $157,685 by $44 a year to $3,225.

Craig Dilger for the Wall Street Journal

Craig Dilger for the Wall Street Journal

Dan Henton spars over salaries at a Lisbon, Maine, budget hearing.

"No more property-tax increases!" the 52-year-old orthopedic surgeon implored as the group met recently at a local hospital's community room. "If you don't starve the system, you won't make it change."

Fresh from victories on the national stage last year, many local tea-party activist groups took their passion for limited government and less spending back to their hometowns, and to showdowns with teacher unions over pay in some cases. Now, amid school-board elections and local budgeting, they are starting to see results—and resistance.

In its budget proposal for the 2011-12 fiscal year, the York district has already axed noontime buses for half-day kindergarten kids, halved money for teaching supplies and raised the fees for driver education to $300 per student from $50.

District parent Sarah Reinecker told the school board she would be willing to pay more taxes. "Starving education is the last thing that makes long-term economic sense," she said.

Legions of tea partiers continue to focus on the federal budget and debt ceiling. But many are following the strategy of other rising political movements, such as the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, and seeking representation on school boards. They are flooding this spring's board elections, and creating an unusually long lineup of candidates in places like York County. Dr. Pandelidis's group is fielding five candidates in May's election and hopes to win a majority on the nine-member board.

From Lisbon, Maine, to Rockford, Ill., tea-party groups are arguing, sometimes successfully, against more property taxes, which in many communities largely go to public education. They say schools already spend too much on extras unrelated to core learning and that staffs are bloated, and they challenge the idea that smaller class size equals better instruction.

Schools are under the microscope on every issue. Members of the Maine Tea Party attended a recent town meeting on the school budget in Lisbon to protest a budget proposal that could raise property taxes to deal with a shortfall. Tea partier and district parent Thomas Barry, 51, said one local school had drafty windows, forcing the school to keep the heat too high.

"Two weeks ago, I went into the school to get report cards, and it was 90 degrees inside," he said. "I was peeling off clothes left and right."

School districts say they are already cutting deeply and need more help from taxpayers. The York Suburban district gets just 13% of its revenue from state and federal funding; the rest comes from local property taxes, and state aid could decline further under budget cuts proposed by Pennsylvania's new Republican governor, Tom Corbett.

"It's like they are saying: Cut at any cost—we don't care about the service level and how it's affected," said Dennis Younkin, finance director for the York Suburban school district.